


Bonus Tracks

by Guede



Series: Commonwealth [3]
Category: Aerosmith - Fandom, Rock Music RPF, Steven Tyler (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crossdressing, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, Past Drug Addiction, Rehabilitation, Touring, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 20:03:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4638417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scrambled egg perfume, lyric-writing, Hawaii, and second proposals.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scrambled Eggs

Joe gradually realized what was going wrong.

He’d been sleeping pretty well, which, considering what they’d gone through the night before, was something of an achievement. It’d been one of those shows where nothing quite went right, but also where nothing was going wrong bad enough to just call it off, and so you just had to muscle your way through to the bitter end. Amps blowing out, snapping guitar strings, lighting snafus, and then, at that bitter end, one trip to the ER for Steven and Joey due to some idiot chucking their steel-tipped boots at the drum riser when Steven had his back to the audience—one of those nights that reminded Joe of why he’d been so fond of certain chemical mood changers. By the time they’d gotten back to the hotel, everyone taking turns slapping Steven’s hand away from the butterfly bandages over his cheek, it’d been morning. They’d ordered in breakfast and then Joe had gone into the bathroom for a second and come back to find Steven comatose in the eggs.

Steven was still dead to the world, twisted over Joe like a lanky boa constrictor, except holding on twice as tight. His head was wedged into the crook of Joe’s neck, so far down that Joe could feel the man’s nose prodding the back of _his_ head, and both his legs were wound a couple times each around Joe’s right leg. Or at least it felt like that, and sometimes with the way Steven moved, Joe could swear that the man had no bones. His ear still smelled like the eggs.

Joe snorted out the smell, twisting his head away, and squinted at the far wall—window. Those were curtains. Still drawn, thankfully blocking out most of the daylight, but the air conditioning unit right under them was blowing one section off the glass, and there was something weird about that. The glass. Too fucking bright, hurt his eyes to look at it, but something was…in it. Reflected in it. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Joe muttered, jerking back around.

To his credit, Ray tried to put down the videocamera. Laura grabbed his arm and shoved it back up. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. “So how are you feeling?”

“Like I’d like you to get the fuck out of our room,” Joe snapped. He went to pull himself up, got dragged down by Steven—still goddamn asleep, snuffling and squeezing Joe’s leg with his thighs—and flopped backwards. “Laura, what the fuck—”

“Fan consensus is that they want more intimate moments between you two.” Straight-faced, Laura whipped out her iPad and held it up so Joe could see something that looked like a pie graph. “They’re worried! They saw blood! They want confirmation that Steven’s okay and that you’re being a good nurse and you kill me, Joe, and nobody’s gonna be around to get you a lawyer for the murder investigation.”

“I don’t fucking _care_ , get the hell out of here, and Tabano, that shit in there gets out and I will fucking beat your fucking—”

“Perry, it’s for the greater good of—”

“Hey, man, she told me you signed off on it, so calm the fuck down because I don’t wanna have to hurt you—”

Steven let out a weird, nasal, whining sigh, like somebody had just popped his lungs with a pin, and they all shut up. He wriggled around on top of Joe, rubbing his face against the side of Joe’s head, and then pulled his head down to Joe’s chest. After a couple experimental nuzzles, he breathed out slowly, gusting warm air down Joe’s belly, and settled down. His hand twitched against Joe’s side, then relaxed so his limp fingers dragged down across Joe’s hip as Joe pushed himself up on his arm.

“So anyway,” Laura said. “We IDed that jackass and he’s gonna be banned from any more shows from hereon out.”

“Great.” Joe worked his other arm free and raked the hair back from his face, then ground some of the shit from his eyes. He blinked a few times, refocusing on Laura’s face. “Thanks. Now get out.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “But it’s for the fans!”

Joe looked at her, and she rolled her eyes again, but put away her iPad and nudged Tabano towards the door. Tabano seemed happy enough to go, but of course he had to have his moment and paused just before going out to clap his right hand to his left bicep in the universal symbol for them taking it up later. When Steven wasn’t going to somehow figure out what was going on and show up and save Tabano’s ass from getting thrown out again, because whatever the fuck Tabano had done for Steven way back in their childhood was apparently worth putting up with Tabano’s overblown thug attitude.

Sighing, Joe slid back down onto the bed. All right, Tabano was a lot better these days, now that they all understood they had different roles, and he even occasionally could be pretty decent in explaining some of Steven’s odder habits. And Laura did do a damned good job and did care about them, even if she also was a fucking publicity machine. And nobody had broken any bones, incredibly enough, even if there had been those couple seconds with Steven slumped over Joey’s toms when Joe had thought they’d fucking killed him. It wasn’t so bad, and he still didn’t want to fucking deal with it.

“Fuck,” Steven mumbled, moving around again. His mouth worked over Joe’s chest and he pushed around his hands, maybe accidentally groping Joe’s hip and inside thigh, before he finally managed to get his head up. “Wha?”

His hair was getting nearly as long as Joe’s, and looking just as messy in the morning, strings of it hanging in his face, in front of eyes that were so dark and wide and so firmly asserting innocence—even bleary as hell—that anyone in their right mind should just vote guilty and go home. He blinked them once, then peered around the room, turning his head so Joe faced three dingy little white strips.

Joe grimaced, then put his hand out and touched one of the butterfly bandages. A little blood had leaked out at the edge and his nail caught on it, and he had to curl his finger quick when Steven turned back to keep from ripping that bandage off. “Hey.”

“Hey, my head doesn’t hurt,” Steven said. Then he pulled his chin down and tried to clear his throat. Made him sound a little less like he’d been gargling razor blades. “But could’ve sworn I heard voices.” 

“Don’t you always hear voices?” Joe ducked Steven’s half-hearted head-butt, grinning, and then smoothed his fingertip over one bandage that was coming off at the end. “You look okay.”

Steven stopped being annoyed and considered that for a second. He spent so much time putting himself out there, clowning around, cracking wise, that people almost never got to see him just like that, just lying there, thinking, holding still so you actually had time to notice what he was thinking. “Yeah. Don’t really wanna get up yet.”

“I don’t think we have to,” Joe said.

“Oh, good.” Steven shifted around on top of Joe, corners of his mouth curling up on the sly when his leg slid over Joe’s groin and Joe sucked in his breath, and then put his arm across Joe’s chest and put his chin on top of his arm. He arched his brows. “Snuggle?”

Not that it really needed much thought, but it wasn’t good for Steven’s therapy to make his ego too happy all the time. So Joe took a couple seconds. “Yeah, okay.” 

Steven grinned outright this time. Big and wide and white, while his knee pushed between Joe’s legs. He leaned on his thigh, dropping his head into the side of Joe’s neck to cackle at Joe’s swearing. His hands were starting to mess around, mostly below the waist, and when Joe trapped them against the bed, Steven just stretched out his whole body against Joe, one snaky rolling press of warm flesh. Joe hissed again and Steven laughed at him, right against his neck, laughing and licking so Joe could hear his necklace clicking against Steven’s teeth.

“What happened to snuggling?” he said.

“Hey, you woke me up,” Steven said. He pulled at his hands. “So now I’m, you know—”

Too damn early for Steven’s bad jokes, but Joe’s hands were full, so he went with his mouth. Steven kept tugging at his hands, but as Joe’s tongue got further and further into his mouth, it stopped being annoyed and started being more desperate. By the time they finally came up for air, neither of them really wanted to keep _discussing_ what they were doing. They just wanted to do it. Which they did.

Halfway through trying to get a fucking grip on Steven’s hips, Steven making that damned fucking hard twisting around like that, sucking Joe’s mouth like that, beating the heels of his feet into Joe’s calves like that, Joe started noticing something wrong again. He was a little too far gone to really give a shit and then he was just flat-out _out_ for a couple of seconds, but then it started to come back to him.

“No,” Steven mumbled, wrapping around him. Sticky and sweaty and still faintly eggy around the ears, and too quick to bite when Joe was just trying to roll them into an unspoiled part of the bed. But then he sighed and tucked himself into Joe’s side, already going slack again, so much lazy weight just assuming he’d be welcome there. “C’mon, wanna sleep.”

“I’m going to kill them,” Joe said, still tugging at his limbs. He moved his arm and Steven’s hip so they weren’t jabbing joints into each other, and for that he got a sloppy nuzzle to the side of his mouth. He snorted, but slid his arm around Steven’s waist. “Steven. You realize this is going online as soon as she gets her hands on—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, c’mon, she’ll make it tasteful.” Steven kissed the corner of Joe’s mouth again. It wasn’t really a kiss so much as just him putting his lips down and then letting the weight of his head drag them away, right back into the crook of Joe’s shoulder where Steven let out a low, quiet, contented breath. Just as rare as watching him stay still, with the way he was always looking around for the next thing. “So people find out I fucking love morning fucks, and I really fucking love it when you’re the one doing them, and you’re really fucking good at them. So what?”

Joe looked at the hallway door, which was just that little bit ajar. Then he looked down at Steven. Then he sighed. “Okay.”

“Snuggle?” Steven said again.

“Okay,” Joe said. He put his head back on the pillow. 

After a moment, he let it roll the other way, towards Steven. The other man shifted a little, moving Joe’s mouth from Steven’s forehead to temple, and then settled down. Then they went back to sleep.


	2. Composing

“Oh, thank God,” Joey said, and then jerked back as if somebody had jammed a taser into his back. “Hey, keep that the fuck away from me.”

Steven pulled up short in the doorway, wounded from eyes on down. He held onto the tattered, crumpled, stained piece of paper as if it were his first child. “Joey, this took me a _week_. And—”

“And it was a long and painful process for us all, and we’re all glad that it’s over and the damn lyrics are done,” Tom muttered, poking at his iPad. “Two sec—okay. Okay. Just read them off and I’ll type it.”

“I don’t know if I want you ungrateful fuckers to have these now,” Steven said, still eyeing them. He shifted his weight, and then, when he noticed that his jeans had just inched perilously close to slipping off his hips, hitched them so they all noticed his fly was still undone. And that he had scratch marks all along one side, and hickeys on his shoulders. “I spent literal fucking hours pulling my brains out trying to put these together, burning the midnight oil, just going crazy, and then I get them down and you act like I’ve got the plague—”

Tom rubbed at his temple. “Joe?”

“What?” Joe ducked his head through the doorway, rumpling his hair with one hand. He paused to pull out a colorful bit of rag—patterned suspiciously similar to one of Steven’s scarves—after which he looked at it, frowned, and flicked it over his shoulder. Then he resumed peering out at them. “What now?”

“Steven won’t give us the lyrics,” Joey said, rolling his eyes.

“Well, because they’re being assholes!” Steven turned around, appealing with wide eyes and frantically gesturing hands. “Nobody ever fucking gives me any credit for all the work I put into these.”

Joe ignored the eyes and hands and went for the wrist, pulling down Steven’s arm so he could read the paper. He tilted his head. Then he yanked the paper out of Steven’s hand, grimacing when Steven hit his shoulder, and turned it upside-down while pushing Steven up against the jamb with his hip and other hand. “Shit. The ink got runny.”

“Oh, my God.” Joey put his hands over his eyes. “Don’t tell me we need to do this again.”

“Do what?” Joe said, looking up. “You weren’t doing a damn thing.”

And of course, then Steven stopped flailing and actually looked at Joe, eyes narrowed, back stiffening up. “Well, don’t go on and suffer, honey,” he said. “Nobody asked you to be a martyr.”

“He just fucked you till you finished them,” Joey snapped. “How hard is that?”

“We are not arguing about this.” Tom looked them all in the eye. Even Joe, who still thought that by virtue of having the worst temper, he was going to be the most intimidating when he’d never had to room with pre-rehab Steven. “We just aren’t. I will go to the ends of the world for this band, but I am not going to the label and telling them we couldn’t finish the damn song because—because—”

“Because Aerosmith is about fucking, that’s the whole point, and so obviously it helps to do what I’m writing, and Jesus, everyone just breathe deep and blow out your shit somewhere else,” Steven muttered, snatching back the paper. He squinted at it, then turned it one-eighty, propping his arm on Joe’s shoulder. “Also, for the record, I finished these _before_ Joe and I started fucking.”

Joe looked over, realized the paper was blocking his view, and pulled his shoulder out from under Steven’s arm. Then grabbed Steven to keep the other man from pitching onto his face, looking like he’d wished he’d had a chance to think about it before he’d done it. “Then why’d you keep crawling off for the pen?”

“It’s call revising, Joe. It’s an editorial process. Involves a lot of thought.” Steven had his fingertip moving along the page and it wasn’t going in a straight line, or even anything resembling a line, but his lips were moving in between his actual mutters, so Tom was praying that that meant they did in fact have lyrics and not just more doodling. “Craftsmanship.”

“Then they weren’t really finished,” Joe said. No particular tone or expression on his face, as if they weren’t all watching his fingers playing along Steven’s waistband. He raised his brows at the dirty look Steven gave him, then leaned over Steven’s shoulder. “Look, just read off the damn lines.”

“And put on some clothes,” Joey said under his breath. 

Steven and Joe both looked up, ready to take offense. “I don’t care if you strip naked to do it. Just give me the goddamn lyrics,” Tom told them.

After a long stare, Steven looked back down at the paper. He scratched the side of his head and let his arm come down on Joe’s shoulder—Joe shifted, stopped himself, and just settled for tugging at his jeans—and finally, thank all powers of the universe, began reading off some lyrics. Tom typed. Joey leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, and slowly progressed from put-upon to incredulous to faintly impressed.

“You really think they’re gonna let us get away with saying that?” Joey asked.

“If I say it fast enough they can’t beep it,” Steven told him, grin ear-to-ear and wolfish. He’d dictated himself back into a good mood, pleased as punch over his rhymes and too busy to notice Joe looking at him as if the man didn’t have any idea about wolfish. Then he shifted back, bending his head to try to make out the last couple lines, and ran into Joe, who grunted and put his hands on Steven’s hips.

Kept them there, looking over Steven’s shoulder again, and not so much at the sheet as at Steven’s face. He was always looking at Steven like that, close and careful and just casually determined to not miss a thing, not so much that it was a big deal to him as that it was just the framework of his life. Occasionally his lips would tug back when Steven cracked wise, and once Tom saw a little teeth in the smile. He didn’t just pay attention—he liked what he was seeing too, and he let that show, no self-consciousness in it because when Joe really cared about something he really didn’t give a shit what anybody else thought about it. 

“Got that? Tom?” Steven was saying.

Tom blinked, then looked down at his iPad. “Yeah, I think so. Let me just save.”

“And email that to somebody too, just in case it crashes and we lose it again,” Joey muttered.

“It’s really not that bad, you know.” Steven looked out at them with big, serious, doe eyes of earnestness. “Sure, it takes a while and you have to put some effort—you gotta put your back into it, but maybe you should try it sometime. It’s good for you.”

“Not really good for my back,” Joe said. His hands were still on Steven’s hips, fiddling with the unfastened jeans not really staying on them, and his interest was now directed mostly towards Steven’s bare shoulder. “Jesus Christ, if we’re going to do every single one of them like this—”

“How many left?” Joey asked, pained again.

“Two,” Tom told him.

“—then we’re getting a fucking cot in here or something.” Joe grunted a second time, probably because Steven had tried to hit him, and Steven cursed and whined, probably because he’d missed or Joe had blocked him, and either way, Joe had managed to get in a grope too. “An airbed. I don’t know. Something that’s not gonna take out my spine, you know?”

Tom looked up from the iPad just in time to see Steven pretend that he was just putting up with Joe’s ideas that were absolutely not spinning the bizarre clockwork passing for Steven’s brain, and for Steven to try and hand him the paper. He held onto the iPad with both hands, till Steven finally crumpled up the sheet and tossed it dramatically over his shoulder. “Two more. Though it’s getting close to lunch, so we could take a break.”

“Are you kidding me?” Steven said. “I’m on a roll here! I’ve got rhymes shooting out of my fingertips, Hamilton, you can’t quit on me _now_. When the muse decides to come calling you absolutely positively do not hang the Do-Not-Disturb sign on your—”

“Joe,” Tom sighed.

“Oh, do not _Joe_ this,” Steven said darkly, just before Joe dragged him behind the door.

There was some thumping, and some wet mouth noises. Steven swore a couple times before he suddenly shut up. That lasted two seconds, and then he started moaning. Joey looked desperately at Tom. “Look, can _we_ go?”

Before Tom could answer, Joe stuck his head back around the door. “Come back in twenty,” he said.

“I’d be fine with giving you thirty.” Tom shrugged. “No rush, man.”

Joe considered it. Steven’s hand appeared over his shoulder, then slid up to curl around his neck, and Joe staggered, his eyes going hazy. He blinked hard. “Yeah, fine,” he said, and pulled back behind the door.

“Oh, God,” Joey said, watching the door slam shut. “Oh, God, I cannot believe we have to do this. Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Tom said, putting his iPad to sleep. “So, want to grab lunch?”

Joey gave it about two seconds of thought. “Could go for a burger, yeah.”

“Okay.” Tom gave the door a couple of slaps to let them know he and Joey were off, to which he got an answering rap and a stifled groan that sounded like Joe, and then he headed down the hall with Joey.


	3. Hawaii

Hawaii was incredibly beautiful right up until Steven started tossing berries at Joey from the room right above. They weren’t any berries Joey recognized, but they were soft enough to explode on contact and they left dark red stains that did not come out in the goddamn wash. Joey looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and thought that he’d make a great murder victim.

Then he headed upstairs. Halfway down the hall, he remembered he’d have to deal with Joe too and it was still early morning—not the best time for any of them. Then he looked down at the blotches on his stomach and hands, and kept going.

The door was already open, so Joey’s attempt to hit it just knocked it further into the room. He heard something, paused, and then went inside.

They’d sprung for the biggest suites in the place and just the first room seemed to go on forever. Joey could hear Joe’s guitar coming from somewhere, but he kept working his way around furniture and spare guitar cases and the random shit Steven was always collecting and he never seemed to pick the right direction. Or maybe Perry was moving on him. Sometimes the guy seemed like a ghost, just disappearing for ages while Steven went batshit and showing up again right when Steven ran out of energy and was looking for someone to fall on.

Steven said Joe showed up for plenty of fights, and Tom backed him up on that, so maybe Joey wasn’t seeing the whole picture. But sometimes yeah, it got a little under his skin. He and Steven had their shit too, but they didn’t disappear on each other. They stayed and fought it out and maybe they got bloody and bruised in the process, but it was usually better that way, since everybody always knew where they were.

“The hell happened to you?” Joe’s voice sounded near enough to be in the same room. Joey looked over and the other man was lying on the floor in front of a TV stand, which had a couple amps topping it. The TV had gotten moved to the floor, next to the balcony door, and was on mute, some old black and white film on it. “You got a rash?”

“No, this is Steven,” Joey said. “I’m gonna kill him. You see him?”

These days Joe had slightly more of a sense of humor, but he still didn’t really get that Joey meant he was going to kill that son of a bitch out of a deep, if twisted, love. But he must’ve been in a good mood, because he just shot Joey a dirty look. Then he put his head down and went back to playing whatever he’d been playing.

“Joey!” Steven bounded in from the left, hands purple from the fingertips to the wrist, and grabbed Joey’s shoulder. He leaned with Joey’s stumble, then pulled Joey over to the balcony. “Joey, man, you gotta check this out. This is so fucking unbelievable, I—”

“Steven, you…” Then Joey sighed and gave up on yelling on the berries, and just tried to not lose his arm to Steven. “Jesus, what the hell is the matter?”

In reply Steven just hauled them up to the rail and waved wildly at the sky. He kept jabbing and hissing about right in front of them, seriously, no shame, and Joey didn’t see anything but the beautiful landscape and the other half of their hotel, curving around so they could actually see into some of the rooms on the—oh. Oh, _damn_.

“I know. I know!” Steven had to grab the rail and bounce up and down, he was so pleased with himself. “Just wait, she sees there’s another one, she’ll wave.”

“She…she’s doing that on purpose?” Joey finally managed. 

“Jesus, you’re still looking over there?” Perry wandered out onto the balcony, guitar in hand, scruffing at his hair. He glanced at them, then sighed and went back inside. Came back out without the guitar, with the same exasperated look. “How many of those does she have?”

Steven shrugged and bobbed his grinning head. “No idea, but she hasn’t run out yet.”

“Jesus Christ.” After a moment Joey had to look away. Not so much because he was feeling ashamed of himself as because he just…really couldn’t believe it. He took a step back from the balcony and ran his hand over his face, then over the back of his head, just making sure that they were all still in the real world.

In the meantime Perry slid in next to Steven. He looked across the way like he was some cranky old bastard checking out the noisy kids next door, then turned around to lean against the rail and try to disapprove Steven into giving it up. “Aren’t you _bored_?” he said.

“Honey, she just keeps getting more and more creative, so I don’t see how we’re ever going to run out of interesting things to show each other,” Steven cheerfully retorted, bouncing on his toes. When Perry didn’t move, and Steven realized he couldn’t get around what the humidity was doing to Perry’s hair, Steven grabbed Perry’s shoulders and began trying to vault over the man.

Joey sucked in his breath and automatically reached out to yank Steven back, but Perry got there first, taking Steven by the waist and stepping forward so Steven ended up over Perry’s shoulder instead of over the rail. Steven moaned and bitched and got dumped back on his feet in about two seconds, while Perry pushed the hair back from his face so he could look pissed off some more.

“Come on,” Steven finally said. “I’m pretty sure she’ll do a handstand if we just make out again.”

“Wait, what?” Joey looked over again, but yeah, while it was still unbelievable, it wasn’t so exciting now. “The hell? Another one? Is she a friend of Laura’s or what?”

Perry crossed his arms, then uncrossed them so he could rub his hand over his face. “I asked, but she just laughed and said she’s still on the fucking continent and hung up.”

“What, you called Laura? You called her and asked what?” Steven stared at Perry for a few seconds, eyes genuinely large with disbelief. Then he threw up his hands and plopped himself down on the nearest deckchair. “Joe, honestly, sometimes you’re just paranoid. They aren’t always out to get you.”

“She has more tape of us than we’ve got of us,” Joe pointed out.

“Joe, listen, I’ve been watching that crazy angel over there for…” Steven consulted the sky “…a good half-hour, and she hasn’t had a hand free to work a camera. It’s not a sting. It’s just some good old-fashioned mutual visual interactive appreciation.”

Joey couldn’t help himself, even if now it was all tainted with the same weirdness that put that wolfish glint in Laura’s eyes, and looked over again. The woman waved at him and he started to wave back, just out of sheer politeness, and then he thought of something and jerked his hand down. Then scooted around Steven and was going to head inside when Steven caught him. “Wait, she doesn’t think _I’m_ going to…I mean, Jesus, Steven, you’ve talked me into some bizarre shit, but…”

“Oh, relax,” Perry muttered. He looked over his shoulder, then shrugged and twisted himself down onto the deckchair, stretching out behind Steven. One of Steven’s many multicolored wraps had been hanging over the chair and Perry knocked it off, then dropped his arm to scoop it back up. It flopped almost completely over him to land mostly in Steven’s lap. “I don’t think anybody needs you to make out with Steven. Or wants you to.”

“Well, if you’re not going to…” Steven pulled the wrap off his legs and threw it dramatically around his shoulders. Then he laid down next to Perry, beaming up at Perry’s exasperated face. “Somebody’s gotta love me, right?”

Perry snorted, but he wasn’t glaring at Steven so much now. He moved his arm around behind Steven, hand flopping in the folds of the wrap, and then actually cracked a smile when Steven scooted his head off Perry’s shoulder onto his chest. “Yeah,” Perry said, looking down at Steven’s head. “Yeah, sure.”

“Awww,” Joey said, and snorted himself when Perry tried to glare at him. One, wasn’t much of a glare when Perry could barely lift his eyes to do it, and two, like Perry really gave a shit whether they saw him and Steven doing their thing. Which, come to think of it, was kind of a point for Steven. “Anyway, it’s not like you haven’t fucked in front of everybody else’s windows. Shouldn’t you be happy that they aren’t trying to get us arrested for once?”

“It’s not,” Joe started, and then had to stop and pull Steven back by the shoulder. He muttered something about not getting ideas and then went back to glowering at Joey, with a little more effort in it this time. “It’s not about whether she fucking sees us, Joey. It’s about I don’t fucking feel like faking it for somebody else.”

Steven lifted his head. “Yeah, well, for somebody who was faking it you were pretty damn—”

At this point Joey had a good idea of when he needed to stick his fingers in his ears. Or just go inside, which he did since they did have an audience. Of course, one step later, he remembered he’d actually come up here to do something.

He went back out and Joe and Steven had already gotten to the making out part of their fight. It was…it wasn’t something Joey was into, personally, but even not being into it, he could sometimes see…kind of see why Steven was so into it. He’d been hanging with Steven for a while and the word ‘settle’ just wasn’t in Steven’s extensive and impressive vocabulary. 

But it wasn’t really settling. Joe had both his hands in Steven’s hair, holding back so Joey could see how Steven had his eyes closed, like he was just so sure of where he was that he didn’t need his eyes open, and that wasn’t going with what you had right then, playing it safe. That was the exact opposite, and if Joey was honest with himself, more of a cliff-dive than he was willing to go with right now.

Although then they kept making out, Steven’s hands starting to go lower than Joey wanted to know about, and Joey thought about asking whether Perry had gotten over his reservations about the woman. And about interrupting and yelling at Steven for those fucking berries. 

And then he just sighed and went back inside to see if any of the hotel staff knew how to get the stains off him. He was still annoyed, but just this one time he’d put it off.


	4. Second Proposal

Brad concentrated on tuning his guitar. He winced when the door slammed and felt his fingers twitch the peg too far, but he gave it a couple of seconds. Once Joe was sacked out on the other end of the couch, and everything had stopped shaking, Brad went back to tuning.

He glanced up when that string was done. Joe was busy with his guitar, playing slide like he was trying to grind his strings into the wood, and he didn’t look up once. But he did have a good thing going on there and when Brad joined in, Joe paused for just the slightest second before keeping on with it. Maybe just a little less about whatever the hell he was mad about, and a little more about the sound of it, which suited Brad fine.

“Pretty good,” Joe said, when it was petering out towards a natural, if untidy, end. He abruptly detoured into some flashy picking, nothing to do with that they’d just been playing, just burning off some energy. Then he flopped back, hands dropping off the guitar. He let out a long, irritated breath and stared at the ceiling.

After another moment, he started feeling around for his cigarettes. It was an okay time for Brad to take a break too and he let Joe borrow his lighter while he scrounged around for his water bottle. “They fix that pedal yet?” Brad asked.

“What?” Then Joe frowned. “Oh, right. No, I think it’s fucked. Just put in a rush order for a new one. Hopefully gets here after the weekend.”

“Oh, all right.” Brad found his water, drank some, and then lit himself a cigarette. It was going to be another slow couple of days, sounded like. Not that that wasn’t to be expected during the writing process, but Steven always went a little bugfuck crazy if they weren’t speeding on at full throttle.

Joe blew a big plume towards the ceiling, then sighed again. “So Steven’s a little excited.”

“Yeah,” Brad said. He put his cigarette to the side and picked up his guitar again, and picked up one of the half-finished ideas they’d tried out a couple of days ago, just to see if he could get any further with it.

Joe pulled his head down and watched for the first couple of bars, smoking away. Once his cigarette was done, he joined in. It didn’t really go anywhere, but it was fun anyway, just one of those comfortable jam moments. Joe’s picking got a lot looser.

Then it skewed funny as a door banged down the hall. Joe looked up, then down at his guitar. He wrapped his hand around the neck like he was going to put it away, then changed his mind and just laid it flat on his knee as Steven came whirling into the room. 

“I got it! I got it!” Steven went down into a knee skid that ended right in front of Joe, waving one of his legal pads. “Look, if we just move this over here and knock out the wall, it’ll fit.”

Joe opened his mouth, then shut it. He spent a couple seconds trying to look at the pad before he gave up and just shook his head. “Steven, we’re not going to fit a whole orchestra in there even if we do…whatever that is.”

“But—”

“It’s not going to work,” Joe muttered, shoving aside his guitar. He swung his legs past Steven and got off the couch, and headed into the bathroom.

Steven stayed on his knees by the couch. He did twist to follow Joe as Joe walked off, blinking and looking like he had no idea what had just happened. Then he looked down at his pad. His lips moved a couple times and he touched the pad, then tossed it to the floor and crawled up onto the couch. He picked up Joe’s guitar and put it in his lap, then looked at Brad. “He upset about something?”

“I guess,” Brad said. He thought for a moment to remember where he’d left off, then went into the riff again. “He was just in here for, I don’t know, fifteen minutes. Don’t know what he was doing before that.”

“Oh, just bitching again,” Steven said under his breath. He folded his legs around the guitar and pushed his feet together, then squeezed his hands up and down them. Then he let go of them and sagged so it looked like the guitar, neck braced against his shoulder, was all that was keeping him up. “Ah, damn it. He’s such an asshole sometimes.”

Brad never answered those, both because he didn’t want to get into it and because he still didn’t even know what he’d be getting into. He knew it was a good thing at the end of the day, but…it just was them.

He just kept playing and eventually something about it seemed to hit Steven the right away: Steven lifted his head, then his hands. Then he rearranged his limbs—always something that deserved a look—so he was holding the guitar by the edge, drumming on it and nodding his head. “That’s cool. That’s a new one. Where were you hiding that?”

“We just were doing it,” Brad said, and then nodded across the room before Steven could yell at him. “It got recorded, you can go play back if you want. Joe came up with this really cool hook.”

“He never comes up with a bad hook,” Steven said. He grinned in Brad’s direction, but it wasn’t at Brad. Then he looked down at the guitar. He drummed on it a few more times, then slipped his hands around to hold it properly.

“It’s in tune,” Joe said from the door.

Steven jerked, as if he was embarrassed at being caught, and then shrugged and played a couple bars of nothing in particular. He was awkward and tentative, his fingers splaying too much, and he knew it, snorting at himself. “Oh, fuck it, you do the guitar bits.”

“Okay.” Joe lounged over in the doorway for another second, then wandered over and pulled the guitar away from Steven. He squeezed himself into the corner so Steven had to shift over towards Brad.

“I just think a string orchestra’s going to sound really cool,” Steven suddenly said. He tucked his leg under himself and held onto that shin with both hands. Then he started drumming it in time with Brad. “You know, just a thought. I just was trying to work it out on the synth and it wasn’t really sounding right, because the fuck do I know about violins and shit?”

For a second Joe was hunched over, ready to play. Then he sighed and stretched out, one of his legs straightening so his foot knocked into Steven’s pad. He looked down, then dragged the pad over and scooped it up. “Probably about as much as you know about guitar.”

Steven’s brows went up and Brad got ready to get up, but then Steven just made a face at Joe. He reached over and took back his pad, and then flopped down that way, slotted in between Joe, the guitar, and the back of the couch. His arm ended up hanging over Joe’s knee so the pad was lying against Joe’s shin. “Asshole.”

Joe glanced over to where Steven’s head was disappearing into his side, then worked his arm around that so he could reach the strings. “You can ask for a fucking orchestra if you want, Steven. I’m just saying we’ll probably have to get a bigger place, you know? But you think you can talk the label into it, be my guest. And look, so Brad and I were doing something and do you want to hear it?”

“Even if I don’t know what the hell it is?” Steven said, pulling up his head.

“Shut up,” Joe sighed.

Steven laughed and pulled his arm up, twisting around so he was lying more on his side. He shoved Joe half off the couch and Joe had to stamp his feet down to keep from going the rest of the way off. Then he and Joe did one of their leg-twining things, which should look incredibly uncomfortable but which just got them where they needed to be, and Steven stuck the pad on the top of the couch so he could curl more around the guitar. “Okay, honey, then show me what you got.”

Joe glanced at Brad for the cue-up, and then launched into it. They were a lot better now at remembering the shit they came up with during jams, even if it was still a great idea to have something recording it, and it went as good as it had been earlier. Steven got it right away, his hand sneaking up to beat time on Joe’s guitar, and at the end of it he pumped his fist in the air and whooped. Joe snorted, but he was grinning. He still got worried sometimes about how Steven was going to take his ideas; it was easy to tell by how relaxed he looked after Steven had dug it.

“That was so fucking awesome,” Steven said. “Joe, will you marry me?”

“We’re already married,” Joe said.

Steven shrugged and kissed Joe on the cheek, then slid back down against the other man. “Yeah, whatever, we should do it again. Then we can get somebody else to pay for the orchestra as one of our gifts.”

Brad had to snicker then, though neither of the other two were paying attention to him anyway. He resettled his guitar on his knee and then went back to that other idea of his, for whenever they came up for air.


	5. Dress

“No fucking way, Steven,” Joe said again, dragging them through the door. Something hit him in the side and he swore, staggering, and then swore because Steven tried to make a break for it. Joe just got hold of the son of a bitch’s skirt and hauled him back in, kicking and screaming. “No. No. _No._. We’re not fucking going out with you looking like—”

“Like what, baby?” Steven said, abruptly cooing. He flopped back against the wall, craning his neck so he was fluttering his lashes at Joe like some demented Barbie doll come to life. All puckered hot pink lips and eyeliner running under his eyes, his—his fucking fake cleavage rounding up under that stupid birthday cake of a prom dress.

Steven laughed, and Joe guiltily jerked his head up and back into something metal and sharp. He hissed and ducked his head, just trying to check if there was blood, and of course Steven took the chance to shove his chest up into Joe’s nose. Joe turned his head away and got a hot flicking tongue in his ear for his pains. He put his free hand on Steven’s shoulder. “Jesus, you are fucked up.”

“Well, you kept saying, you couldn’t picture it,” Steven said, using his reasonable tone. He leaned in more, nibbling at the edge of Joe’s earring. His damn hands were already playing with Joe’s belt-loops, tugging at them. “And I cannot believe we lost all the photos. I mean, except for those ones Ray took, but I look like a lipsticked pig gussied up for the fair in them and _that’s_ not really going to show you—”

“Nah?” Joe mustered. One of them had knocked into the door and it was trying to swing shut on them, closing off the hall light. He kicked at the door to make it open up and got a patch of Steven’s face screwing up at him, and couldn’t help laughing. His hand on Steven’s shoulder slipped a little and got tangled in the strap of Steven’s dress, pulling it so one fake breast went sideways in a way a real one wouldn’t, and then Steven hit him and he had to pull the other man in to keep from getting any more damage done. Steven’s skirt bunched in between Joe’s legs, rustling over his jeans. The door started backswinging and Joe didn’t do anything about it. “Nah. Shaky fucking hand, though.”

“With the shit we were smoking that night, it wasn’t that bad.” Steven tilted his head, pausing, like he always did when the conversation went there. Like he was guilty, like he wasn’t but was mad because he felt he should be, like he remembered it all and didn’t, because drugs had that funny way of rewinding your memory wrong. “Yeah, well.”

Like he didn’t like being quiet, and he didn’t, but sometimes you just had to be and even Steven couldn’t fight that. Which was a shame, Joe thought—not liking being quiet, because Steven wore himself to pieces being the life and the light and the sun everywhere he went, and a lot of times for people who really didn’t deserve that shit. And then, the times he got quiet, it wasn’t like he disappeared. It wasn’t like there was nothing left to look at.

“You going into a mood again?” Steven asked. Cocked his head at the same time, wriggled his fingers along Joe’s waist, not teasing. Nervous. More like a real girl right there than he’d been for the last half-hour, flaunting and twirling and whooping while one of them tried to catch him and drag off that fucking drag. He was looking real wide-eyed at Joe because he was trying to get his fake lashes out of the way, that and bouncing his leg so Joe could feel Steven’s knee trembling against his own. “It’s just a dress, Joe.”

“And boobs.” Joe pushed at the one that was out of place.

Steven snickered and the tail of it jagged up and down like somebody was halfway through tuning it. “It didn’t look right without them. I mean, the whole front and…and you know, it’s just for kicks.”

“You’re just really weird, Steven,” Joe said, and kissed the side of Steven’s mouth. He felt Steven go still and smoothed his hands down the other man’s sides, down to Steven’s hips. Honestly, didn’t feel so different from Steven’s usual wardrobe till you got there and then all that…extra fabric. Joe pulled up a couple of handfuls, just kind of marveling when it didn’t end. “I can’t even, you know…I just kind of looked up and my brain just…I don’t know, you know. This is just…”

“C’mon.” Steven nudged in a little, his breath slightly too warm for comfort over Joe’s cheek. “What’s under it’s still the same as what you were handling this morning. And after lunch, and—”

“Oh, my God.” Joe kissed him full on the mouth to stop it, then kissed him again because Steven was fucking trying to rub up against him and fake breasts against Joe’s chest with a real erection against Joe’s thigh was just fucked. Things were colliding in Joe’s brain that shouldn’t be within miles of each other. “Tom was gonna fucking kill us. You have to stop—”

“ _Naaaah_ ,” Steven said, his voice tuned all right now, dead on drawling a dare. He slid his hand over Joe’s, squeezed it, and then hooked Joe’s hand down over his leg, across too much fucking ruffly silk, and then up under his skirt. “Nah. C’mon. C’mon, man, you totally—”

“You’re wearing a dress,” Joe said, already biting his lip. Steven’s lip, actually, their mouths bumping too close even when they weren’t trying to kiss. He felt Steven’s fingers at his fly, pushing at the zipper while one goddamn fake boob slid up to bob against Joe’s collarbone, and he would’ve sworn except Steven moaned and hitched up into him. “Jesus Christ. No. Wait. Take this fucking thing off.”

“C’mon,” Steven was saying, tracing out with his mouth on Joe’s jaw. “C’mon, honey, c’mon, take it off, c’mon.”

“Oh, fuck.” Joe had his hands in fucking panties, had to be, silk too with lace, and then Steven was sucking his tongue and pulling down his jeans. “ _Fuck_.”

When they pulled Steven and Joe out of the closet about fifteen minutes later, Steven not saying a word, just with that wide, wide smile, Joe feeling like somebody could light a fucking crack pipe off his burning face, Tom blinked once. Joey didn’t blink at all.

“No shit,” Joey finally managed. He twitched back when Steven tripped over a trailing piece of the skirt. “Never would’ve figured you for it, Perry.”

“Shut up,” Joe muttered. He pulled Steven upright and then put his arm over the other man’s shoulders when Steven kept on swaying. Mistake, since right after that he was fighting to keep Steven’s fucking hands out of his clothes, but he couldn’t really work up too much of a temper over it. “Just shut up.”

“I’m just glad you can afford not to borrow Terry’s stuff now,” Tom said to Steven. “I’m sure as hell not explaining what happened to that one.”

“An act of God,” Steven intoned, pulling himself up straight. He held it for a hot second, then collapsed, giggling, onto Joe’s shoulder. He yanked out the fake boobs and tossed them at Joey. “A rock god, motherfucker! I got me done by a real, live, motherfucking Joe fucking—”

Joey ducked and ran away, while Tom rolled his eyes and strolled on past them. Steven made a dart like he was going after Joey, but let Joe tug him back easy enough. He tucked his head into Joe’s shoulder, then flicked his skirt to cover his knees like he even existed in the same world as modesty.

“C’mon,” Joe said. “Just shut up.”

Steven laughed at him again, then curled into Joe, fucking dress and all. He didn’t say a word, not even when Joe finally just gave and smiled into his hair. Not a word.


End file.
